Data Engineer · Toronto, Canada

Engineering data
into decisions.

I'm Harish Gandhi — a Data Engineer at TextNow with an M.S. in Computer Science from IIT Chicago. I design and scale ETL pipelines, data automation, and machine learning integrations across healthcare and analytics domains — bridging business needs and technical execution. Winner of the TextNow AI Hackathon 2025.

Explore my work Get in touch
Harish Gandhi
AI Hackathon 2025 Winner
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Years in Data
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Featured Projects
3.72
M.S. GPA · IIT Chicago
0
Hackathon Won
01

Selected work

Projects spanning machine learning, NLP, data engineering, and voice interfaces — from award-winning AI assistants to published research.

Hackathon Winner 2025

AI Support Assistant

Winner of the TextNow AI Hackathon 2025. An AI-powered support assistant that classifies user questions against Slack history, suggests relevant past answers, and escalates unmatched queries via chatbot to Jira with contextual ticket creation.

AI NLP Slack API Jira Chatbot
TextNow AI Hackathon 2025 trophy
Calorie Count Policy

Calorie Count Policy

Analyzed the impact of mandatory calorie labeling on restaurant menu choices using causal inference and statistical modeling. Presented at PyData Chicago.

Python Causal Inference Statistics
View notebook
Recruiter Analytics

Recruiter Analytics

Web analytics dashboard tracking recruiter engagement patterns on LinkedIn profiles using web scraping and data visualization pipelines.

Web Scraping Analytics Visualization
View on GitHub
Crime Prediction

Crime Prediction

Supervised ML models (Random Forest, SVM, XGBoost) on the Chicago crime dataset predicting crime type and location with 85%+ classification accuracy.

Machine Learning Scikit-learn XGBoost
View notebook
Tirukkural Alexa Skill

Tirukkural Alexa Skill

Published Amazon Alexa skill reciting couplets from the ancient Tamil classic Tirukkural, with contextual explanations and keyword search.

Alexa SDK Node.js NLP
Learn more
NewsOptimism

NewsOptimism

NLP pipeline crawling major news outlets, applying sentiment analysis and topic modeling to surface a daily "optimism score" with positive story highlights.

NLP Sentiment Analysis NLTK
Live demo
Patient Activity Tracker

Patient Activity Tracker

Computer vision system monitoring patient activity and posture in clinical settings, using image classification and time-series anomaly detection.

Computer Vision TensorFlow Healthcare
Learn more
02

Areas of expertise

Languages & Scripting

Python SQL Scala Shell Script

Data Engineering & Orchestration

Apache Airflow dbt Azure Data Factory Databricks Spark ETL Pipelines

Cloud & Big Data

Snowflake AWS (S3, EC2, Lambda, MKS, MWAA) Azure (Cosmos DB, Data Lake, Synapse) Kafka

Containerization & CI/CD

Docker Kubernetes Jenkins Git

Databases

SQL Server PostgreSQL MongoDB

Visualization & Tools

Redash Tableau JupyterHub
Specialties ETL Development • Data Modeling • Data Quality & Accuracy • API Integration • Data Pipeline Optimization • Machine Learning Deployment
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The journey

Education
Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago
Master of Science in Computer Science
2016 – 2018  ·  GPA 3.72 / 4.0

Concentration in Data Science, Software Engineering & Database Systems.

Data Science Software Engineering Database Systems Machine Learning
Certifications
  • ML with TensorFlow on GCP SpecializationGoogle Cloud · Coursera
  • Art and Science of Machine LearningGoogle Cloud · Coursera
  • Mining Massive DatasetsStanford University
  • Statistical LearningStanford University
  • Neural Networks and Deep Learningdeeplearning.ai · Coursera
Speaking & Community
2025
TextNow AI Hackathon — Winner

Built an AI support assistant that classifies questions against Slack history, suggests relevant answers, and escalates to Jira with contextual ticket creation.

2018 — Present
NumFOCUS — Guest Speaker

Contributing to open-source scientific computing community outreach.

June 2018
PyData Chicago — Speaker

Presented text mining and causal inference research on restaurant calorie labeling policy.

2011 — 2013
SpirIT-ED Manager & LEAP Coordinator

Led community engagement and educational outreach initiatives.

"If you hang around the barbershop long enough… sooner or later you're gonna get a haircut." — Denzel Washington
Open to conversations

Let's build something
remarkable together.

I'm always open to discussing data engineering, research collaborations, or just connecting. Reach out through any channel below.

Say hello
LinkedIn GitHub Twitter / X Instagram Medium Talks Achievements